Fatima Enam is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. Lying at the intersection of synthetic biology and the gut microbiome, her research interests include engineering biological systems and expanding the repertoire of chemistry compatible with these living processes.
She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2014 and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Iowa State University (2019), where her work focused on harnessing the programmability of microbes to understand the role of prebiotic oligosaccharides. Her current research in the Sonnenburg Lab focuses on developing approaches to engineer the gut microbiota and using in vivo gnotobiotic mouse models to understand underlying host-microbe interactions. Fatima was recently named one of MIT Chemical Rising Stars, a Leader of Tomorrow by the 2020 GapSummit and selected as a delegate to the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany. She is a recipient of numerous awards including AIChE’s Women’s Initiatives Committee Travel Award, Graduate Student Presentation Award in the AIChE Sensors Competition and her graduate work has been recognized by Iowa State’s Research Excellence Award, Teaching Excellence Award, Brown Graduate Fellowship and an honorable mention for the Karas Award for Outstanding Dissertation.